Big Data and analytics take center stage for tech providers

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Dive Brief:

Three large tech service providers unveiled Big Data tools this week, highlighting the vendor emphasis on making analytics easier for customers. SAP released SAP Data Hub, a tool for enterprises to navigate the data landscape, in an announcement Monday. The tool offers integration, management and governance tools in the data pipeline so businesses can accelerate data operations.

Microsoft unveiled Azure Machine Learning tools at Microsoft Ignite on Monday. The new services on the company’s cloud include model management, experimentation and a workbench platform for data scientists and developers.

IBM announced the Integrated Analytics System, a unified data system that works across public, private and hybrid clouds, on Tuesday. The offering includes software improvements, broader support for data services and types and machine learning processing to to simplify training, testing and deploying models.

Dive Insight:

Companies today are reluctant to throw away data because analytics tools are being applied to information once untouched to gain new insight. Software providers are increasing Big Data tools as customer demand for new analytics rises.

Airbnb and Uber built their own in-house analytics systems, but for most companies an in-house platform simply is not an option, and they need to rely on large tech service providers like IBM, SAP and Microsoft for these tools.

These providers are among an elite few companies which offer the full stack to companies — including hardware, software, cloud platforms and data services. But many other large service providers like GE are capitalizing on the hardware these giants put in place and focusing their own resources on expanding service portfolios and data tools.

For cloud providers, like IBM and Microsoft, expanding data tool offerings is key to ensuring customers do not turn to another party for such services. AI and machine learning capabilities are in especially high demand, and enterprises are pouring billions into their portfolios